


Timebending

by Katharos



Category: Avatar the Last Airbender - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-06
Updated: 2006-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-11 09:08:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11145333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katharos/pseuds/Katharos





	Timebending

Title: Timebending  
Author: Katharos  
Fandom: Avatar the Last Airbender

Note for kneazles, time multifandom request

 

The first night after they left the Southern Air Temple, Aang slipped away from their campsite while Sokka and Katara argued about dinner.

He perched at the root of an old tree and picked up a long, springy twig. He stared down at it absently, running his fingers along it again and again. It reminded him of home; the monks were always using things like this to demonstrate there lessons. Like on the nature of time. They’d always taught that time was just another element; that someone truly enlightened could move in it as easily as they did air. Aang wondered if his situation would prove them right or wrong.

Smiling slightly he bent the twig, echoing one of Monk Bortsu’s favourite lessons and bringing the two ends to touch. Time might be bent as easily as this twig, Bortsu lectured, while the novices imitated his waggling chin behind his back. With one step we might advance a hundred years or more, ignoring all that time, as easily as an ant might pass from one end of this stick to the other without travelling its whole length!

Aang stared at the long loop his twig made and shivered. He’d missed all of that. It was as if he’d just jumped between the two ends, between then and now, and he shivered again, imagining the great, gaping hole that lay in his life.

He ran his finger along the loop the twig made, letting it fall away before it reached the end. He may have jumped ahead, but everyone else… they had all finished, somewhere on that line. They were all dead.

He flinched and let the twig spring back into shape, then bent it again.

Bend, touch, release. Bend, touch; the twig snapped in his hands. 


End file.
